The heart doctor who is now the uni’s med school boss
Friday, 22 August 2025
A heart surgeon has become the first dean of New Zealand’s newest medical school.
Dr David McCormack started in the role as the dean of the University of Waikato’s medical school this week.
It’s an interim six month role as he’ll oversee the team, who will create a program that delivers to New Zealand, “a workforce that really caters to the needs of the population”.
He’s spent nine years at Te Whatu Ora Waikato, including as a heart surgeon at Waikato Hospital, clinical director, associate chief medical officer and part of the National Clinical Leadership Team.
McCormack said New Zealand would benefit from more locally trained doctors, especially those who want to “deliver primary and rural care to the population”.
His journey to becoming head of the country’s third medical school began on the other side of the world.
He was born in London to Irish parents, with his mother from Galway, in western Ireland and his dad from Althone, which is halfway between Galway and Dublin.
“My father lived in rural Ireland. He left school at the age of 12, to work in building and earn money for his 11 siblings, being the eldest.”
McCormack’s mother was a housewife looking after him and his brother, and later went into home help and nursing.
Growing up, McCormack and his family did not have great access to healthcare.
“I saw people around us and in my family that struggled with health and I saw some doctors that were great at their job.”
It was his upbringing and family health struggles that drove McCormack to head into medicine to provide it to others.
“I just see that if we can provide excellent healthcare to our population, then we can actually take a lot of stress off families and we can actually allow people to live better lives.”
He studied at the University of London and was the first in his family to attend university.
After finishing medical school, he worked in various hospitals across the UK, picking up different things along the way, before setting his sights on heart surgery.
For McCormack, it was a specialty that could impact people. His work would “turn around the course of their life and their families” within hours.
It also had the draw card of technical skills that allowed McCormack to use his hands and brain “to help people through a vulnerable patch. That really gave me a lot of satisfaction”.
In 2016, McCormack, his wife and their nine-month-old daughter moved from London to New Zealand.
'My wife, who’s from Barcelona, said to me ‘hey look around, there’s a big world out there’.
“We looked at lots of different countries and New Zealand seemed like the best place to work, live and bring up a family.”
The McCormacks were sold on the land of the long white cloud after two weeks, in part, because of its “great culture”.
“It’s got such a friendly kind of environment and such good values”.
“When you look around the world and you systematically think of each country, there isn’t a place in the world where we’d rather be.”
The medical school’s long-term goal is to train generations of doctors and work with healthcare providers to “allow New Zealanders to enjoy good health for longer and allow them to enjoy life”.
“If we have got generations of healthcare providers working together to do that for our population, whenever I finish my career and life, I can look back and say that was a worthwhile contribution.”